Onboard equipment such as a car navigation system and car audio system is usually designed in such a manner that a single type of onboard equipment is mountable in plural types of vehicles. In this case, it is desirable for both an onboard equipment maker and carmaker to be able to apply a single type of onboard equipment to as many types of vehicles as possible.
A reason for this is that from a standpoint of an onboard equipment maker, it is feared that an increased number of types of the onboard equipment can complicate manufacturing management and increase management costs. In addition, from a standpoint of a carmaker, it is feared that mounting dedicated onboard equipment in a specific model individually is apt to bring about an excess or shortage of stock of the onboard equipment in the process of manufacturing vehicles, which will impair production efficiency.
In order that a single type of onboard equipment (navigation system) can implement navigation suitable for models of vehicles or for an environment where the vehicles are used, Patent Document 1 discloses a navigation system that switches, in accordance with vehicle information, setup information to be set in a processing program for executing the navigation.
On the other hand, as for display contents of the onboard equipment, it is desirable to have unity of design with the interior design of a vehicle. In particular, popular cars or luxuary cars have a greater demand for that.
In addition, as for font design of characters to be displayed on the display frame of the dashboard, since it varies depending on the type of a vehicle, it is convenient for a font of character strings to be displayed on the onboard equipment to be switched in conjunction with the switching of the screen design in order that a single type of onboard equipment can cope with plural types of vehicles.
The onboard equipment, however, has a small display in general. Accordingly, when changing the font of the character strings without altering a screen layout, there are some cases where the character strings are not contained in a display frame on the screen. Since such a condition deteriorates the visibility of a user, that font cannot be employed.
Thus, when using only a font contained in display frames, the font has a possibility of impairing the unity of design with the interior design. Accordingly, when emphasizing the unity of design with the interior design of the vehicle, a problem arises of restricting the types of vehicles capable of mounting the single type of onboard equipment.
Incidentally, Patent Document 1 does not disclose means for solving the problems about the screen design and character display described above.
The present invention is implemented to solve the foregoing problems. Therefore it is an object of the present invention to provide an onboard display device capable of providing screen design and character display matching a plurality of models of vehicles.